Hear us Roar

This week our podcast guest is Kim Gottlieb-Walker (Lenswoman in Love – a Novel of the 1960's and '70's, indie published, February 2025). Kim shares the complete re-writes she did on her debut based on critique group feedback, why she calls herself a patchwork writer, and the story behind the support group of women writers over 70 which she founded. We discuss her life as a photographer in Hollywood, shooting such celebrities as Bob Marley, Pink Floyd, and Joni Mitchell, and how a story of her encounter with Jimi Hendrix made her teenage daughter realize her mom had once been a "babe."
 
Kim Gottlieb-Walker's fifty-year career as a photographer covered a wide range of subjects, from classic rock and roll, reggae, and politics in the '60s and '70s to major motion pictures and television shows. She began her career shooting for underground LA newspapers and magazines including Crawdaddy, the Staff, and Music World. She also shot the stills for John Carpenter's Halloween, The Fog, Christine and Escape from New York and worked at Paramount Pictures as the production photographer for Cheers and for Family Ties. She also served as the representative for still photographers on the National Executive Board of IATSE Local 600, the International Cinematographers Guild.
Her coffee-table photo books Bob Marley and the Golden Age of Reggae and On Set with John Carpenter were published by Titan Press (UK) distributed by Random House (USA) and both are now in multiple printing and she's had gallery shows in London, Los Angeles and New York.
LENSWOMAN IN LOVE - a novel of the 1960s & '70s  won over a dozen literary awards including Best Debut and Novel of the Year. Photos that informed her debut novel can be found on Substack. To learn more about Kim, click here to go to her website.
Women authors over 70 looking for a feisty, smart, supportive weekly zoom chat - contact Kim at Kim@Largedoor.com with Vintage Writers in the heading.

Our podcast guest this week is Barbara Burton (A Walk Down Rushville, Manuscripts Press, April 2024). Barbara, a lover of true crime series, has a unique publishing experience to share. She signed with her press before completing her novel and they put her through a 6-month rigorous deep dive into craft first with strict completion deadlines, write-in Zoom meetings with a cohort, and detailed exercises in character development, plotting, dialogue, and setting. She shares her best advice to new writers and describes why consulting experts is non-negotiable.
 
Barbara is a former Capitol Hill reporter and registered nurse. For the past 25 years, she's worked in management consulting helping companies with strategic visioning, marketing, cultural alignment, communication and sustainability. She's the author of two illustrated, sing-along children's books, the most recent, published in 2022, is titled Annie Kai Lani Kai Lou: Maui's Beloved Pup. She also is a soft jazz vocalist. She created the song and sings vocals for the children's books and has recorded two CDs.She lives in La Jolla with her husband and two Springer Spaniels. To learn more about her, click here. 
Barbara was inspired to write a novel about how individuals "create" a family when they have no family of origin, having experienced some loss of family in her own life. In the novel, her protagonist finds self-fulfillment and creates a nonprofit organization that encourages neighbors to reach out to others in their neighborhood and create an extended family. Barbara decided to make the organization real and it is now a registered nonprofit in the state of California. www.neighborsasfamily.org.

This Special Edition podcast features long-time WFWA member Julie Carrick Dalton (The Forest Becomes Her, St. Martin's Press, July 2026) who has just published her third book with a Big Five publisher with another one due in 2028. Rather than focus on her publishing journey, we dive deep into the writing process itself, including finding your "why", emotional mining your own psyche for true emotional resonance, and how to turn a passion (in Julie's case, climate activism) into a framing network for your writing career. So much meaty discussion here, including why you might want your book to rate lower on GoodReads, exploring the different stages in women's lives, and the power of chiastic storytelling, a novel where the end circles back to the beginning.
 
Julie Carrick Dalton is the author of The Forest Becomes Her, The Last Beekeeper, and Waiting for the Night Song. Her work has won the New Hampshire Book Awards' People's Choice Award for Best Novel and been named a finalist for the Massachusetts Book Award, the Siskiyou Prize for New Environmental Literature, and others. Her novels have appeared on most-anticipated lists from CNN, Newsweek, USA Today, and Parade, among others. A former journalist, organic farmer, and beekeeper, she is a TEDx and keynote speaker who frequently speaks about fiction in the age of climate crisis at universities, museums, and conferences in the United States and abroad. She teaches in Drexel University's Creative Writing MFA program, is a 2026–27 Visiting Scholar of Note at the American Library of Paris, and is a frequent guest lecturer at Harvard.
To learn more about Julie, click here.

This week our guest is Lindsay Marie Morris (The Last Letter from Sicily, Storm Publishing, January 2025). We discuss how actually going to your book's location beats online research, the difference between writing as a journalist and as a novelist, and why it's good to have a second novel in your back pocket when you're querying your debut. We also explore content creation as a marketing approach (Lindsay published 300 articles related to her book in the months before publication) and how you also need a plan to maintain momentum after your debut's release.
 Lindsay Marie Morris is a novelist and journalist in Los Angeles. Inspired by her Sicilian-American roots, her debut novel traces a World War II–era story of love, resilience, and family secrets that spans continents and generations. Her second novel, Beneath the Sicilian Stars, returns to this pivotal moment in history, following a family divided between California and Sicily whose lives are forever changed by the war, forcing them to confront questions of loyalty, belonging, and sacrifice. A graduate of Marquette University, Lindsay began her career in magazine publishing, serving as an editor at publications including Folio: and Shape, before expanding into digital media and nonprofit communications. She coaches writers, visits book clubs, and blogs about history, culture, and writing. She has presented lectures at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, libraries, bookstores, museums, and organizations throughout the US.
 To learn more about Lindsay, click here.

Our podcast guest this week is N. J. Mastro (Solitary Walker: A Novel of Mary Wollstonecraft, Black Rose Writing, February 2025) Nancy's debut is an historical, biographical novel of the woman most people consider the first true feminist. We discuss how to deal with the news that two novels with the same general subject matter are being released right before yours, how she had to narrow her focus to Mary's last ten years, and how research is never over, even during revision. Finally, we talk about how and why Nancy changed her cover after publication and the WFWA groups which were instrumental to her writing success.
 
N.J. Mastro writes historical fiction and publishes Herstory Revisited, a blog where she reviews biographical novels about prominent women from the past. In 2025, she published her debut novel, Solitary Walker: A Novel of Mary Wollstonecraft. Besides writing, Mastro is an avid reader, a seasoned cook, and a wine enthusiast. A former school superintendent, she holds a doctorate in educational leadership, a master's in school administration, and a bachelor's degree in elementary education. Originally from Minnesota, she and her husband retired to South Carolina so they could golf year around. You can find N.J. and her blog Herstory Revisited on Substack at https://nancy691.substack.com/.
To learn more about N.J., click here.